EOTE: Dude! Where’s My Starship?

It began as a impromptu invitation to a roleplaying game (RPG) session. Suddenly there I was running a short Star Wars Edge of the Empire scenario for my colleague Rizal at my office.

You can tell the tone of a game by the title

Commandeering Oskara’s character folio, Rizal became the human male bounty hunter known as Riz who owns the YKL-37R Nova Courier named Glamorous Hedgehog manufactured by Gallofree Yards.

Edge of the Empire

Dude! Where’s My Starship?

The previous day, Riz arrived at Port Emerald in the Ord Mantell system. He accomplished a mission to retrieve a family heirloom for a local entrepreneur and earned four thousand credits. He was gleeful of his new-found wealth and booked a nice room at a two-story old tavern-style bed and breakfast at the very edge of the mesa that housed Port Emerald, overlooking three landing platforms. The Glamorous Hedgehog was parked upon one of the platforms.

Money

The Bright Jewel sun was shining and the birds were singing when Riz threw open his window to enjoy the refreshing morning air. He wore his bounty hunter costume and with his trusty blaster carbine at his side he left his accommodations to look for breakfast. (Rizal failed a Perception roll I asked him to make though got an Advantage.) As Riz strolled along the street, he had a bad feeling about something but was unable to put his finger on it.

(Failing his Streetwise roll) Riz went up and down streets and alleyways but was unable to locate any restaurants that were open. The lanes he travelled on grew darker and danker. Soon he found himself trapped in a cul-de-sac enclosed by a series of abandoned houses.

A Gamorrean appeared behind him and blocked his way out of the cul-de-sac. He grunted and gestured something that was immediately understandable: pay up or get clobbered by my club. Riz was flabbergasted at being mugged by this porcine thug. All he wanted was breakfast.

Then he remembered something: he was a mean and fearsome bounty hunter. He should act like it.

His hand reached for his carbine and drawled, “Dude. I’m a bounty hunter.” (A successful Coerce roll!) The Gamorrean turned and fled into the shadows. Then Riz, too little too late, called after the thug, “Dude! Where do I get breakfast around here?”

Map of the first encounter and the holomap

Any Colour You Like

Before Riz left the area, he peered into the broken windows of the abandoned houses and spotted something. He climbed through a window into what used to be a living room but the ceiling had caved in. He huffed and he puffed and pulled out a leather pouch with some sort of a starbird design on it. Within the pouch was a palm holoprojector.

He tried to employ his computer skills to activate the projector. However he could only call up a map of an unknown terrain with a lot of the labels missing… except for one that looked a lot like X MARKS THE SPOT and one SILVERPEAK MOUNTAIN.

Luckily he has heard of the mountain, which was located on the planet Aridus.

It was time to head back to the Hedgehog and travel to Aridus to find treasure there!

Eclipse

Riz was so into digging up treasure that he bought a couple of bread rolls instead of having a proper breakfast running back towards the landing platform.

That was when he discovered what it was he had a bad feeling about: the Glamorous Hedgehog was missing.

Incensed, Riz went into an anger-fuelled search of his ship in the streets of Port Emerald. (He failed his Streetwise roll again.) Following the word on the street, he ended up in the southern warehouse district right before a warehouse where he was told a stolen ship was hidden.

He strode into the warehouse displaying fury… which then faded when he found himself between four Imperial stormtroopers and five mercenaries in a stand-off. They were about to draw their weapons on each other.

He yelled in frustration, “ALL I WANT IS FOR SOMEONE TO TELL ME WHERE MY SHIP IS!”

Then, the shooting began (because the yelling turned out to be a failed Charm roll).

Energy bolts criss-crossed the general area where Riz was standing, but none landed on him. So he turned and fled. However, the large warehouse door was being pulled down by three Jawas. He grabbed the door handles and lifted with all his might. (With a successful Brawn roll with a Threat) Riz managed to raise the door with the three Jawas still hanging on to it. They immediately let go and ran for their lives.

As stormtroopers and mercenaries fell left and right, the lead mercenary, a square-jawed, tanned, decked out with weapons and gear while covered in padded armour that had seen better days ran towards Riz. Riz thought, this would be the guy to help me find my ship.

The mercenary said to him, “Thanks for opening the door, friend. My compatriots and I thank y-” POW! A single flash, some sparks and the smell of burnt flesh preceded the mercenary slumping to the ground with a gaping and glowing hole in his back. (Remember the Threat result in the previous roll?) Riz thought, this could have been the guy to help him find his ship.

Panicking, he let go of the door which rattled down and struck home with a heavy metallic clunk while the fighting continued within.

Only one thing left for Riz to do: haul jets out of there.

This is my office lounge, by the way

Speak to Me

Exhausted and hungry, Riz roamed the streets of Port Emerald blindly still looking for clues to where the Glamorous Hedgehog might be. (Successfully rolling Streetwise this time) Riz wandered into an open air eaterie that sold freshly-made Emerald Flatbread, when sweetened dough is cooked on a griddle, mixed with eggs from some flightless fowl and dipped in spiced gravy, also known as roti telur.

The roti telur seller was an ancient slightly-hunchbacked ancient lady with a perpetual scowl. However, Riz declared, “Dude! This is the best roti telur I’ve ever tasted!” The proprietress replied with a more intense scowl.

Rejuvenated by the warm meal, Riz resumed his search.

A small-ish Trandoshan hissed his lizard-like tongue at Riz and gestured for him to approach. The squamous being with orange scales said, “I hear you have been looking for a ssstolen ship?”

“Yes,” said Riz. “Do you know something about it?”

“Oh, ssstep into my officcce.” His office was an old vegetable crate for a table in an open but tight alleyway. The smell was somewhat unpleasant. The Trandoshan began to haggle a price for the location of the ship, initially setting at five thousand credits.

The haggling went on back and forth for a minute or so until Riz remembered that he was an intimidating looking bounty hunter. He capitalised on that fact, pinning the reptillian alleyway entrepreneur to the wall. “I don’t have time for this. You either tell me where it is, or you answer to this!” Riz exclaimed with his free hand on his carbine.

It was then apparent that the Trandoshan was stalling when a voice boomed out behind him, “SLEGOR! YOU PAY ME WHAT YOU OWE NOW, OR I’LL SHOOT YOU NOW!” The human was tall and wide, completely piebald and heavily scarred, with a heavy blaster pistol strapped to his hip.

“I’ll pay you!” yelled Slegor with glee. “But only if you defeat my champion here in a gunfight!”

Riz (and his player) realised that he had been played.

Breathe

“Go for your gun!” the ruffian barked at Riz’s back, which gave the bounty hunter a marked disadvantage. The man drew his gun, while Riz spun. The man fired. His bolt screeched past Riz’s head and chewed a sparking hole in the wall. Riz levelled his blaster at the man and squeezed the trigger. The man’s chest exploded and he fell onto the unsanitary back street ground.

And where was Slegor?

The Trandoshan had been attempting to escape through a camouflaged hole in the alley wall when Riz grabbed him by the scruff of his neck. He was now truly intimidating. “I think I’ve more than paid up, don’t you think so?”

The whimpering reptilian disclosed that the Bosko Gang, a group of Aqualish have been stealing light freighters from unsecured landing bays. The Gang has a chop shop under the city at Remembrance Level, Section 39, Warehouse 12 which also doubles as a hangar opening out the side of the mesa. Slegor had heard that their most recent haul was a Nova Courier.

He headed towards one of the plaza structures that led to the underground section of the city. The sun was ascending slowly, nearing its midday position. Commerce was bustling at the shops and stalls along the pedestrian thoroughfare Riz strode along. He saw a fishmonger that sold fish for a hundred credits per kilo. Lunchtime eateries were setting their outdoor chairs and tables. Security personnel were strolling the streets on patrol. A blacksmith was hammering at something in his shop. There was an open shrine in a small building that housed a presumably very important idol of a deity for some religion Riz could not identify.

Soon, he entered the gaping maw of the entrance of the Port Emerald underworld. The sun disappeared as he walked down wide steps with dozens of other locals.

Asking for directions to Remembrance Level, he found himself led to an elevator with a collapsible gate. Also, he found that the man was extorting him for three hundred credits. Pay, or be trapped in the lift.

He considered drawing his blaster but instead decided to do things quietly and paid the hoodlum who graciously accepted the cash and hit an icon on his datapad screen causing the elevator to descend.

Quickly drawn maps of Port Emerald locales

The elevator deposited Riz at a T-junction. He spotted a sign that read, SECTIONS 1-15 LEFT, 16-30 FORWARD and 31-45 RIGHT. He turned right.

The Great Gig in the Sky

Riz proceeded cautiously. Warehouse 7. Warehouse 8. Warehouse 9… Up ahead was a young-ish Aqualish with a blaster pistol standing guard in front of the blast doors to Warehouse 12. Riz walked drunkenly up to the Aqualish who said, “You cannot be here! Leave the way you came, or you will be shot!”

Riz told him with naivete in his voice, “But I want to go through there. You can’t stop me.”

The Aqualish raised his blaster pistol. “Last warning. You don’t move away in five seconds, I will shoot. No one will find your body!”

Riz kept lurching forward, so the guard fired. (The NPC rolled a Failure.) Riz dodged the single red bolt swiftly and had his carbine pointed back at his attacker immediately. A flash of red a moment later and the Aqualish fell.

Riz retrieved a secured comlink and two fragmentation grenades from the guard’s belt pouches. He attempted to slice into the coded device, but (with a Computers skill Failure) shorted it out but (with an Advantage) learned the frequency of all the comlinks in ship thieves’ secure network. Then he unlocked the blast doors and sneaked into the chop shop.

There was the Glamorous Hedgehog in the middle of the space.

The far wall of the warehouse was open to the blue skies and white clouds outside, turning it into a hangar on the side of the mesa upon which Port Emerald was built. Disused crates and barrels were stacked against the walls at various locations. An inactive refuelling pod was located in one corner. At the far wall was a large screen display where one Aqualish member of the Bosko Gang was studying the deckplans of a Nova Courier. Three other of the walrus-faced aliens were examining the underside of the Hedgehog. His ship’s entry ramp was lowered so he could rush aboard if there was no one else in sight.

Riz devised a plan and hoped that it worked.

He used his comlink to break into the frequency of their comm net and quickly said, “Guys! I have company! Multiple hostiles down the corridor! Need help from all of you!” (A Deceit roll and it was a Success!) The four Aqualish rushed towards the blast door with their weapons drawn, leaving the one at the computer screen where he was.

Then Riz realised: They would see the incapacitated guard and quickly rush back in!

Sure enough, they did. So Riz lobbed one of the grenades at the Aqualish thieves… and missed. It arced past them and fell between some heavy duty crates. There was a deafening explosion, minus shrapnel and flame, but the concussion disoriented the group! Before they could recover, Riz leapt out from behind his cover and raced for the entry ramp. (He rolled an Athletics check to see if he’d trip and fall. Thankfully he did not fail.)

The Aqualish at the computer console could not react in time.

Riz raised the entry ramp and locked it, then rushed past his deactivated astromech droid and jumped into the pilot seat. Internal power was activated and still fed into the engines, allowing him to quickly start them up.

He pulled on the levers and the Glamorous Hedgehog roared out of the warehouse hangar on the side of the Port Emerald mesa. Riz piloted his Nova Courier up and away, victory and catharsis making him laugh loudly in the cockpit. He waved at Port Emerald and headed up towards space.

He said, still laughing to himself, “Dude! That was the best roti telur I’ve ever tasted!”